damn small screens..

I can agree on the smaller army size Brad, with a population that near maxes at 15000 realistically, having more than 1500 troops as a standing army would be near insane(rough equivalient would be conscripting EVERY male between 18-27, who wasn't an essential support profession, eg blacksmith).

Now as a magical world the rules can be bent/broken in later mods, but for now I think this is fine.

And to echo an earlier poster, will Kingdom troops and Empire Scions be able to level and gain abilities.

I choose to believe that every "person" in the game actually represents 10 people.  Problem solved!

I can really see the potential for creating remakes of Ultima IV or V with the elemental engine, the tactical battle system would work wonderfully with this.  I look forward to having a go at something like this during Beta 4.

If you've ever played Ultima IV then you've played Elemental tactical battles in essence.  

Though you can also watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPnUd2kBcEo

If you're not familiar with Master of Magic.

...well, hundreds is nice, anyway. Disappointed by the small number of troops, but excited about the prospect of having it expanded in the future. I hope that maybe we'll see 1,000 man armies...

its nice to have a big battle now and again, but really it shouldnt be a priority. pretty easy to use but strategical/tactical combat mechanics are key. i have Age of Wonders, and i could win a tactical battle against almost insane odds (where i would have surely lost if i had done an auto-resolve). but even so, the base of the combat wasn't hard at all, not usually too many troops, and not having to control too many aspects to keep things going smoothly.

My hopes for elemental are that it can be an enjoyable game to just sit down and play a random map. the campaign, multiplayer and modding is nice and i will use it but the core should be to let a casual player (who knows how to play) to just hit new game and enjoy for a few hours. (day long games will DEFINITELY get boring fast)

Finally TACTICAL BATTLES!

Ahh but, will this beta finally answer the question of will Elemental have dungeons?

Thanks for the link to that. I found it was an enjoyable few minutes. I like it as an inspiration. And knowing that you guys enjoyed that style of game, we'll see by the end product of Elemental, something that is generations ahead, yet still hearkens back to it's roots.

This (idea) is rather strongly related to Tactical Battles ...  https://forums.elementalgame.com/387469

as for Dungeons ... definitely would like those, though will probably only be in Mods and Expansion packs (doubtful for 1.0)

You can mod it. Looks like they didn't put techs in to let you create something like a Battalion. If a mod created that tech and stuck it in the warfare tree, then you could unlock say 1000 unit stacks.

Such a tease with those tiny screenshots!

Looking forward to this.